Undercover Video Exposes the Dark Side of Chicken McNuggets


Back in 2013, a proposed law that would have criminalized the act of secretly videotaping abuses on livestock farms—known by critics as an “ag gag” bill—failed in Tennessee. A least one of the state’s chicken operations has reason to lament that defeat. An undercover investigator with the animal-welfare group Mercy For Animals managed to record the above footage at T&S Farm in Dukedom, Tennessee, which supplies chickens for slaughter to poultry-processing giant Tyson—which in turn supplies chicken meat for McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets.

For those too squeamish to watch, the video opens with a worker saying, “You don’t work for PETA, do you?,” before proceeding to pummel a sickly bird to death with a long stick—which, for good measure, is outfitted with a nasty-looking spike attached to its business end. More beatings of sickly birds proceed from there. 

Both the poultry giant and the fast-food giant quickly cut ties with the exposed Tennessee poultry farm, The Wall Street Journal reports

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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